This groundbreaking book, an important contribution to Naomi Mitchison criticism, examines three novels, The Bull Calves (1947), The Big House (1950) and Lobsters on the Agenda (1952), and a selection of short stories, with particular regard to the supernatural, fairy-tale and mythical content which is a recurrent element in her work. Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999) was a highly practical person - a social and political activist, a feminist and a pacifist - yet was drawn to the idea of an 'irrational' dimension to life, and reported inexplicable experiences from her childhood onwards. An...

n the fast disappearing slums of the Claggans district of a big Scottish city, only a few tenements still stand. In this strange half-world a small group of men and women live out one hot summer week of their lives. Experience is heightened by the presence of a maniac among them-a man whom some of them at least must know, a sex killer who already has his eye on his next victim and is planning to strike again. But this is in no way a whodunit. It is a warm and human story of the loves, fears and hopes of simple people: of Mrs Sheehan, feeling lost and useless with her family grown up and gone;...

The south side isn't just a location, a neighbourhood, an area on a city map. In these brilliantly perceptive novellas, all set in Glasgow, it stands for the flip-side of the psyche, the darkness behind the facade. The title story, The South Side, with its echoes of the Bible John murders, finds Matthew, newly widowed and remarried, glimpsing and trying to deny events from his past which he has repressed for years. Machinery deals compassionately with an elderly woman whom others might describe as a neighbour from hell. The magical realism of Below takes Belle, a feisty bag-lady, on a...